Strawberry Leaves

It’s good to need a coat again. It’s good to have a coat, and a faithful wool cap to lift from off its summer pedestal of old books by the door. It’s good to walk in the clear frosty air. It’s good to be out with the young moon, and Mars, and Saturn, and Jupiter. It’s good to hear the sound of geese honking overhead, and in the nearby wetland. It’s good to come back in, and to need to blow the nose, and to blot up the moisture that has collected on the mustache and beard. It’s good to read notes from friends and members of the family, and then later to read them again, even when their content is memorized and known. It’s good to wonder what each of their writers is doing now, some sleeping in different time zones, others sitting down to a meal, or working, or reading, or doing the wash, or planting flowers in the yard, or removing them because winter has come. It’s good to know that there’s no way to know much at all, and that even that is subject to change. It’s good to have nothing to insist upon, nothing to prove, nothing to lose, nothing to gain.

The strawberry leaves are changing now. See them rise? They fall up somehow.

October 23, 2020

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